All in the family

In the nearly three years that George & Sons has been open, the Esterling family has proven that they can deliver the goods. The unassuming seafood eatery is a Hockessin hotspot.

By
Pam GeorgeStaff
Writer

At
first, it was all about the oysters.

Happy
to find somewhere other than Harry’s Seafood Grill to satisfy her
craving for raw oysters on the half shell, Marcia Stephenson and her
husband headed to George & Sons in Hockessin, which opened an
oyster bar in 2015.

“The
quality is exceptional,” said the Prices Corner-area resident.
“It’s great to have an alternative.”

She
and her husband now go to George & Sons about twice a month, but
now their eyes wander to the entrée section of the menu. “We
‘graduated’ from the oyster bar to sit at the tables,” she
said. The first time her husband tired the colossal crab cake – a
mound of snowy white meat – he was hooked.

She’s
not the only one who thinks so. Her friend, Gillian Daniels of
Landenberg, is also a loyal customer. “The oysters are always top
notch,” Daniels said, “and the crab cake is heaven.”

Given
that George & Sons started life as a seafood market, it’s not
surprising that the quality of the ingredients is rave-worthy. But
using what’s in the case to create a memorable meal is no small
feat, as any restaurateur will tell you. In the nearly three years
that George & Sons has been open, the Esterling family has proven
that they can deliver the goods. The unassuming seafood eatery is a
Hockessin hotspot.

The
patriarch of the business is George Esterling III, who’s been
swimming in the local wholesale and retail seafood industry for some
time. He was just 23 when he started working for Pathmark as a
trainer under Bernie Kenny. (Kenny, who retired in 2004 from
Pathmark, went on to purchase and open Shop Rite stores in northern
Delaware.)

Esterling
decided to put his experience to entrepreneurial use with the opening
of Fresh Catch, which had three successive locations. As the business
expanded, he moved, and by 1999, he was selling to Greenville-area
patrons in a Lancaster Avenue location near Wawaset Park and Westover
Hills.

Fresh
Catch’s most recent location was in the Wilmington Riverfront
Market, where he soon realized that customers wanted prepared meals,
such as fried fish sandwiches, instead of a piece of ruby tuna to
cook at home. Unwilling to compromise on his vision, George III
closed and went back to working in wholesale and retail for other
operators.

Bitten
by the self-employment bug, he decided to open George & Sons in
2009. This time, he picked a site on Old Lancaster Pike in Hockessin,
near the family’s home in Mendenhall Village. The business moved to
its current location, a landmark red brick building, in December
2014.

Meanwhile,
George IV and younger brother Tyler grew up in the business. On
weekends, they often accompanied their father to the Philadelphia
seafood market to buy product. When college was not a good fit for
George IV, he helped his father open the new business. Tyler was
still in high school, so he worked on weekends and holidays.

The
younger Esterlings came up with the idea for a nine-seat oyster bar,
with additional table seating and a limited menu, which included
lobster rolls, soups, salads and other items that you might find at a
lobster shack on a coastal New England road.

The
building, which many longtime locals remember as Hank’s Market, had
previously been home to a sub shop, which had removed the kitchen
equipment when it vacated the space. The new owners had to outfit the
kitchen from scratch.

As
for the culinary talent, George IV had some high-school friends who’d
gone into the hospitality business and were willing to work for up to
seven months each to build a resume.

He
acknowledged that it is challenging to find staff who are as excited
about the business as he and his brother. It takes a certain
personality to embrace shucking. As with the Esterling brothers,
it's often in the blood. Last summer, patrons at the oyster bar
watched a fresh-faced high-school student shuck oysters with ease.
His father had been a shucker. “His dad came in and was really
cool. He wanted him to learn it,” George IV said. “He just took
to it.”

The
staff has settled into a core group that the family would like to
keep. “We want that interaction between people,” he said. But the
family is still on the floor. “Customers want to see Tyler and me
shuck the oysters or cut their fish. It’s our trade; it’s what we
do. We already had built such a rapport with our customers that they
would come in to buy a fish and stay 45 minutes, just to talk. Now
they can sit down and have a beer.”

As
the owners grew more confident in their restaurant skills, they
expanded the menu. Additions were also due to customer demand. “We
have a 20-foot case filled with fish,” George IV said. “People
were like, ‘When can I have some of that? When can you sear me up a
piece of tuna?’ Now we know that the demand is here for a solid
seafood restaurant.”

Stephenson
and her husband have had fun trying different items on the menu.
“Their steamed shrimp? Amazing!” she said. It’s hard to stay
away from the lobster bisque and crab cake.

The
restaurant recently installed a char-grill and fryer to enhance the
menu options. But that does not mean the relaxed feeling of the
restaurant will change. “Some of my friends are into the
fine-dining scene, but that is not the direction that this restaurant
is going in,” George IV said. “I want to stay homey and true to
what George & Sons is. I don’t want a pretentious restaurant.”

Right
now, there is no fear of that. A fish tank gurgles against one wall,
next to a sign that reads, “George & Sons. Thank you for coming
in today! Just shuck it.” Strings of lights twinkle from a drop
ceiling, and from anywhere in the bar you can see the refrigerated
cases of fresh fish. The best seats are at the oyster bar, where you
can watch the shuckers at work.

Stephenson
appreciates the baby boomer-friendly music that the family plays in
the dining room. “The service has been good, too,” she said. “The
people are friendly. I really like it.”

This
is truly the place where everyone will learn your name, if they don’t
know it already.

It
might please the customers to have the Esterling family on hand on
any given day. But how does the family feel about working with each
other? George III’s wife and the boys’ mother, Mary Ellen
Esterling, helps out with the bookwork when she’s not at her
full-time job at the DuPont Company. The boys’ girlfriends pitch in
when needed. There are occasional disagreements, but George IV said
it helps that they all share the same vision for the business.

That
vision includes leveraging strong relationships with oyster growers
to help restaurants build their own programs. Wholesale, after all,
was the older Esterling’s bread and butter for a number of years.
“Wholesale is his strong suit,” George IV said. “I’m getting
excited about the idea of getting on the road with my dad and
extending our reach to chefs in the area.”

By
putting the focus on wholesale, some might say that George & Sons
is filling the gap left by the closing of Dawson’s Seafood in
Wilmington. But George IV said that’s not been a reason for the
increased interest.

The
wholesale side has grown organically. He said businesses, including
personal chef companies, are calling if their current vendor can’t
deliver on time, or they’re unhappy with the quality. It’s not
unusual for chefs in white coats to pop in and order seafood for the
nightly specials. “We want anybody who isn’t getting attention
from his or her current supplier to call us,” he said.

The
retail market and restaurant’s customers primarily come from the
immediate area, but there are also a bevy from Kennett Square,
Landenberg and Newark. One couple from New Jersey made the trek over
the Delaware River because they said the seasonal closing of the
Jersey Shore restaurants had left them without good seafood.

Feeding
these customers and filling orders takes a lot of legwork. Since
there’s not enough cold storage for seafood in the Wilmington area,
the Esterlings travel to a Philadelphia holding house four or five
days a week for pickups.

Swordfish,
salmon and tuna remain staples. Older customers, many of whom did not
grow up eating seafood, are happier with these familiar species. The
younger customers are more likely to try less-expected items like
taug, skate and tilefish, which George & Sons is selling. “There
are a lot of fascinating and local species we should be eating,” he
said.

Expanding
the selection, the menu items and other businesses opportunities,
including catering, does not mean George & Sons plans to open
more locations. Hockessin is home. Said George IV, “This is a town
that we can thrive in.”

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